Free Republic

City Impounds Untagged OR Inoperable Vehicles from PRIVATE PROPERTY

Teenagers in a Maryland county blighted by violence are to be banned from the streets between 10pm and 5am during the week, it was announced on Monday, in a bid to bring rocketing juvenile crime rates down. Angela Alsobrooks, executive for Prince George's County - which encompasses eastern Washington DC and the surrounding suburbs - said that parents could be fined up to $250 for repeated violations and children could be turned over to the Department of Social Services. 'I'm just going to put it very bluntly: Somebody has got to take responsibility for these armed and dangerous children. And...

States with liberal one-party control have average liability of $22,214 per taxpayer vs. $1,814 in red states! The nation’s Democratic-controlled states have unfunded debt that is 12 times greater than the burden on taxpayers in states under total Republican control, according to a study released Tuesday. The nonprofit group Truth in Accounting published “Financial State of the States,” which analyzes the public finances of all 50 states. The group found that state governments have accumulated $1.5 trillion in long-term debt nationwide, mostly due to unfunded employee pension and retiree health benefits. In general, the fiscal picture is far worse in...

llinois is like Venezuela now, a fiscally broken state that has lost its will to live, although for the moment, we still have enough toilet paper. But before we run out of the essentials, let's finally admit that after decade upon decade of taxing and spending and borrowing, Illinois has finally run out of other people's money. Those "other people" include taxpayers who've abandoned the state. And now Illinois faces doomsday. So as the politicians meet in Springfield this week for another round of posturing and gesturing and blaming, we need a plan. And here it is:

..........It is not Emanuel’s fault that Chicago’s three largest employers, after the federal government, are the public-school system, the city government, and Cook County’s government. Although Emanuel is a product of the Chicago politics that made Barack Obama, the crisis brought on by such politics now requires Emanuel to take many measures to make Chicago an exception to the nation’s economic lethargy under Obama. Emanuel’s task—condign punishment for any Democrat—is to salvage the blue model by making the private sector dynamic enough to generate tax revenues sufficient to fund improvident public contracts and their pension promises. Hence Emanuel’s focus on...